![][1] [1]: https://bit.ly/3jhw02k #### Big thanks to: ghsushsu123: for general help RainingTerror: for providing the Gkids BD AC39: for ripping the Gkids BD nedragrevev: subtitles (TL, editing, timing, TS) #### [Discord](https://discord.gg/PMrccmpYTu) #### Other films in the Ghibli project: * [My Neighbor Totoro](/view/1445155) * [Laputa](/view/1502230) * [Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro](/view/1700966) ___ ### Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind v2 (2014 JP BD version) #### What's new in this v2: * Better Japanese audio with far less noise reduction * Better English audio with less noise reduction, considerably more dynamic range and no clipping * A new translation for Hideaki Anno and Kazuyoshi Katayama’s audio commentary * Majorly overhauled subtitles with many changes and fixes to the translation and redone timings by [nedragrevev](https://github.com/nedragrevev/custom-subs) #### See also the [2010 BD version](1425297) of this v2! ___ ### Video If you don't count the modified-to-match TS on this one, the video is the only thing different between the 2010 BD and 2014 BD versions of this v2. I personally still much more prefer the 2010 version despite its shortcomings. I just can't get over the excessively blue colours on this BD, but I thought I'd do a double upload after I saw some people favouring this over the 2010 BD. Too hard to choose just one, so uploading both ought to be the easy solution. Also, I'd said this 2014 BD used a different scan from the 2010 BD in my April upload. That was apparently false. Both use the same 6K scan from the camera negative, and only the colours and the processing done on them differ. All the encodes look varyingly worse yada yada… They do take up less space, you just have to be prepared to compromise on the quality with them. ### Audio For my first Nausicaä upload back in April, I used the Japanese track from the 2010 JP BD, which I have since learned used immoderate amounts of noise reduction, essentially meaning it sacrificed audio quality for a “cleaner sound”. The same thing goes for the UK BD English track I used, but it also had a ton of clipping throughout in addition to the NR, causing everything to be the same volume and generally not sound as intended. Like any other film audio track from the 1980s, the original Japanese audio for Nausicaä has hiss, and anytime there’s hiss, you can’t always rely on BD authoring firms to properly manage the amount of NR they apply to it because they evidently tend to go overboard at times, worsening the audio quality as a result. [Blah-ray](https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/) summarized the consequences of overusing NR beautifully on their blog: >"The hiss present in the optical and magnetic soundtracks of older films is not an age-related artefact. It was present the day the film was first screened and it remains on the film today, unchanged. Hiss does not intensify with time; the sound for these movies is as hissy today as it was originally. > >Hiss increases with each successive analogue generation, but it is also present in first-generation elements. Like film grain, hiss cannot be removed without removing ‘real’ information. Grain removal leaves film looking waxy and sterile; hiss removal makes a movie sound muffled and muted." These audio mishaps have now been rectified by only using the best possible audio for this v2. After looking at blah-ray's comparisons and doing some of my own, the releases with the least fiddled-with versions of the Japanese and English tracks were the 2011 Disney US BD and the 2005 Disney R1 DVD, respectively. It's great that the Disney BD had a good quality JP track, but it’s a real pity the only release that doesn't use the same cracked-out-the-wazoo master of the English dub is a DVD from 16 years ago. If you take a look at the waveform comparisons below, you'll clearly see how all the other releases are limited to the point of heavy clipping. The Disney DVD is the only one that preserves the dynamics. I also put all the tracks through a dynamic range (offline) meter, and the Disney DVD track had a dynamic range of 19 dB, while the other releases all reported a 7 dB smaller DR at 12 dB. DR values shouldn't be blindly trusted, but they can give a good basic indication of how loud and exaggerated the audio is. Though In this case, you wouldn't be too far off base just believing the numbers because the DVD track, unlike the other releases, does not sound fatiguing in every scene with even slightly higher volume action happening. *So this all sounds great for the DVD track, but it's only 192 kbps!* That is true, but as you probably see by now, there are other factors to take into consideration when determining the quality of an audio track. To reiterate, I'll again quote blah-ray's blog: >"In my previous explanation, I wrote about the hypocrisy of denoised lossless audio, and that spiel still stands. If you transfer an optical or magnetic soundtrack—say you even do this at 24-bit, and, hey, maybe even at 24/96 or higher—and then systematically remove or significantly attenuate all frequencies over 8 kHz, is your resultant DTS-HD MA or LPCM output still truly lossless? Would a 192 kbps AC-3 track that didn’t undergo this process of noise reduction not be more lossless, in a way? > >So yes, I am absolutely insinuating that a huge chunk of the praise heaped on the lossless soundtracks of catalogue blu-rays does expose how full of shit people can be about these things. They can have a speaker/receiver setup worth thousands and a pair of golden ears to match them, but their judgement of audio usually boils down to ‘lossless = good, lossy = bad.’ If only it were that simple." The situation with Nausicaä’s dub isn’t as bad as all frequencies over 8 kHz being gone from every release except the DVD, but there is still more NR on them and, more importantly, unacceptable amounts of clipping and hence an audible decrease in dynamic range. The 2014 JP BD is much closer to the Disney DVD in terms of NR usage, however it still has the same major clipping issues. If you insist on having a technically lossless version of the English dub, there's the one from the UK BD included as the third track. The fourth track is the audio commentary by [nomad key animator](https://i.imgur.com/9afd8V4.png) Hideaki Anno and "self-appointed Assistant Director" Kazuyoshi Katayama. They talk about behind-the-scenes stuff, their paths leading up to working on the film, how some shots in it were constructed during the busy production, and how it shaped their careers. It's also very modest of Anno to compliment everyone else's animation and then talk lowly of his own scenes. My favourite part must be their discussions about Miyazaki, though. Some fascinating stuff overall, to say the least. ### Subtitles Since the first upload in April, I've read and collected feedback people have had about nedragrevev's subtitles and forwarded it all to him. He's been taking all of it into consideration and has revised some of his older projects, which it turns out, Nausicaä was one of. It was one of his first full translation efforts a couple of years ago when he was starting out. After two years of doing translations, one would naturally get better, and it was clear there were things to improve on with Nausicaä. This month he released a v1.52 of his subtitles, which I've used for this v2. This v1.52 revision of his includes a considerable overhaul of the translation with many fixes and changes in order to get it to the same level as the stuff he currently puts out. If you weren't happy with his subtitles the first time around, I very much recommend checking them out again now. nedragrevev's notes: >"Quite a few fixes and some additional lines of dialog added (background dialog where I could make it out). Plenty of translation adjustments to better reflect the Japanese and flow more nicely. Much more carefully done for this revision. Changed "Ohmu" to the common noun "ohmu" as appropriate, since it's just a name of an "insect" species, not a personal name. > >Timing: The August 2021 revision saw a full retiming of every line. Should present better than my first version. > >I've given the August revision a careful QC (as has hydes, big thanks again), so these should be free of errors. But should you find any, please report them on my GitHub repository page. Suggestions are welcome." Nedragrevev based his TS on the AU Madman BD, which uses the older master the 2010 JP BD uses. The BD here has vastly different colours and somewhat less grain compared to the AU BD, so to match the TS to the look of this BD, I've modified the colours and blur amounts for all signs. They should all blend in quite nicely again. Big thanks again to RainingTerror for providing me with the Gkids BD. I managed to find out that it included an updated translation for the audio commentary, which I OCR'd, styled the dialogue of, and retimed lines for in a few places to hopefully improve the presentation a bit from just the plain PGS look. I also included the UK BD version for anyone who might prefer the old translation. ### Comparisons The Gkids BD wasn't out yet when blah-ray did his post on Nausicaä, so I redid the JP spectrograms + one for the ENG audio: [Disney DVD vs Gkids BD](https://slow.pics/c/pQQRduuG) |Audio| | -| |[JP spectrograms](https://slow.pics/c/LRCusiL6)| |[ENG spectrograms (blah-ray)](https://slow.pics/c/R9DWuKrL)| |[ENG waveforms (blah-ray)](https://slow.pics/c/9JdrYXuz)| |[DR Meter data](https://pastebin.com/raw/ayjMV2ij)| |Video| | -| |[BD comparisons](https://slow.pics/c/CbtFqbja)| |[2014 JP BD vs encodes](https://slow.pics/c/Fd3pQ1Xc)| ### Specifics Video: 1. 2014 JP BD Remux (1920x1080, 23.976fps) Audio: 1. Japanese 2.0 FLAC (2011 Disney US BD) (default) 2. English 2.0 AC-3 (2005 Disney R1 DVD) 3. English 2.0 FLAC (UK BD) 4. Commentary 2.0 FLAC (UK BD) Subtitles: 1. Signs [nedragrevev] 2. English [nedragrevev] (default) 3. Commentary (Gkids BD) 3. Commentary (UK BD) [MediaInfo](https://pastebin.com/raw/aXSTPvRu) ![][2] [2]: https://bit.ly/3B90vOe